Bloggers Beware: Your Relatives and Friends Are Reading Your Blog

For most bloggers, our readership consists of our family and friends. And some of them don’t like what they read.

My niece read my post on Obama and the 4th of July and called my sister to say, “I didn’t know you hated the 4th of July. You really didn’t enjoy taking us to those picnics and fireworks displays? ”

Then a friend greeted her with: “Oh, so you don’t like the 4th of July. You’re lucky Bush isn’t president; you could wind up on a terrorist watch list for that.”

Another of my sister’s friends said, “We better get a sworn statement from your sister that nothing said at Thanksgiving dinner shows up on her blog.” (My husband and I spend Thanksgiving dinner with my sister and her friends.)

My husband and son have warned me that I better not write anything about them on my blog.

This does pose a problem. In retirement, friends and family members become a larger part of one’s life. It’s hard to avoid mentioning them. But then I don’t want to alienate the only readers I may ever have.

Any other bloggers out there who have dealt with this problem???

Retiring from my main volunteer job: generational change in the feminist movement

Retiring from a volunteer job is more complicated than retiring from paid employment. It’s clear I won’t be coordinating the Women’s Studies program at CCP and won’t be teaching classes. I hope to maintain a connection with the College (e.g. guest lectures, serving on advisory boards), but there will be no ongoing responsibility, no significant commitment of time and energy.

Retiring from my main volunteer job (president of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Organization for Women) is not so clear-cut. I want to stay involved, but need to step back so new leadership has room to develop.

Progressive organizations often have trouble with transitions to new leadership. I’ve seen quite a few bad transitions and would like to model a good one—staying involved, being supportive, but not meddlesome.

I’ve seen so many people in my generation who want to hang onto leadership—even if they are just grassroots volunteer positions. Politicians are the worst; they never want to make room for younger folks. A while ago I decided I didn’t want to be one of those old people hanging on far too long, wearing out my welcome, blocking opportunities for younger people.

I am fortunate that there are wonderful younger women taking over my job coordinating Women’s Studies, teaching my service learning course, and taking over my main volunteer job, the Presidency of Phila NOW. (It’s a lot harder to find someone who wants to take over an unpaid job.) Thanks, Mary and Tara and Lauren!!!

NOW seems to be filled with women who want to hang on to chapter presidencies they’ve held for decades. Too often NOW chapters consist of a president-for-life and a mailing list. No wonder membership is falling.

As Katha Pollitt noted in recent Nation article,

“For twenty years, young feminists have complained that older women have kept a lock on organizational feminism. Robin Morgan famously told young women who protested that her generation wasn't passing the torch to "get your own damned torch. I'm still using mine." (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/pollitt )

We had a real opportunity for generational change at this year’s national NOW convention, but sadly the members chose another course. See my post on the convention at the Philadelphia NOW blog

Granted, it’s easy for me to step aside and make room for a younger generation. I am so ready to retire from both my paid and unpaid jobs, but then not everyone is. Here’s where it gets complicated. Should women who have struggled hard to reach positions of real power and influence (think Ruth Bader Ginsberg) be under any pressure to make room for younger people?

But if everyone hangs on, what happens to younger people in a very tough job market? And how do progressive/feminist organizations, develop the next generation of activists if people in their sixties hang onto most of the leadership positions?

I’m really interested in your thoughts on this.

Why I feel better about the 4th of July and about retiring now that Obama is President

One of my Facebook friends, Julia Ramsey, asked: “Does anyone else feel a renewed sense of pride and patriotism this July 4th weekend?”

Yes, the 4th of July feels different with Obama as President. To quote Michelle, for the first time in my life, I feel proud of my country.

I brought it up at a 4th of July dinner with my sister, her husband and some friends. My sister said she never liked the 4th of July. It was always hellishly hot, and when her kids were young she had to go to those awful barbecues, parades and mosquito-infested fireworks displays. And as a member of the Vietnam War generation, she didn’t feel very good about her country. None of our friends were the patriotic types.

When we talked about it over the phone yesterday, she said that Obama’s election made her feel more patriotic not just because his victory signals that racism is waning, but also because Obama obviously loves his country warts and all. If he could get over what he called our country's “tragic history,’ maybe she could too. I had never thought of it that way but it made sense and maybe explained some of my (more or less) change of heart.

It’s a lot harder to explain why his election has made me feel better about being retired. A while ago I mentioned to some friends that for some inexplicable reason having Obama in the presidency made me more comfortable about retiring. Their response: that doesn’t make any sense.

With a little help from my friends and family, I've kind of figured it out. Reflection on one’s life comes with the territory of retirement. For a long time I’ve been depressed about the huge gap between what I had hoped for in my youth and the ugly reality of George Bush’s America. This is the tragedy of the 60's generation: we spent our youth in a time of social possibility and our middle and later years during a time of reaction.

But some of the battles we fought did change the culture—if not the economic system—and Obama’s victory was in some sense a validation of the 60’s. (Yes, I know he doesn’t quite see himself that way.)

I was an early supporter—from at least November 2007. My sister recalled that I got into fight at 2007 Thanksgiving dinner with Clinton supporters. But I didn’t believe it was really possible and I was very quiet about my support.(I was a little uncomfortable as I am a NOW chapter president.)

Like most people my age I didn’t think it was possible that this country would elect a Black man as president. After Iowa, I began to rethink this and came out of the closet as an Obama supporter. I told the members of my NOW chapter and it turned out it wasn’t a problem as many of our active members were also Obama supporters.

I was a nervous wreck during the primary and having anxiety attacks up until Election Day. (Thank you, Nate Silver. Whenever I panicked, I went to fivethirtyeight.com to look at Nate’s reassuring stats.)

Inauguration Day was one of the happiest days of my life—certainly the happiest day of my political life. I couldn’t believe it had really happened.

Now I have gotten used to President Obama. What seemed unthinkable now seems normal! And like many other Obama supporters, I’ve begun to complain: Why doesn’t he demand repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell?" Is his support for the public option in health care weakening?

So how does all this connect to retirement? Witnessing this change in my country and making some small contribution to Obama's victory has made me feel a lot better about moving into a stage of life when I will play less of a role as an engaged activist--although I’m determined to be politically active as long as I'm sentient. I’ve entered my retirement in a much more optimistic frame of mind about the possibilities for social change. That counts for a lot.

A message from Philippa Kafka: There are some amazing older women out there!

I received a message from Philippa Kafka one of the contributors to Women Confronting Retirement: A Non-traditional Guide.

Philippa is really impressive. She is still restoring houses and doing something called kickbox and zumba. There are some amazing older women out there! From Philippa:

Your comment made my day! Thanks so much. I am now 76, my husband, 62 (he retired with me) and we have been retired ca 10 years.

My last publication was in 2005, but I seem to have lost my desire for scholarship. I am working on my memoir in a most desultory fashion. I began editing, reviewing, judging submissions for a feminist journal in 1998, before retirement. I love it.

Yes, we are still restoring/upgrading houses, my husband, seven days a week, myself only a few hours at a time.

I kickbox twice a week, the oldest woman, by far, in the class. My husband is generally the only male in the class every time. I also do zumba twice a week, but a few older woman are in these classes because women love to dance and jump around at any age. Again, my husband is generally the only male in the class. I believe that the older we get the more we should be physically active. I jump into the air more and higher with every "high" call than the teacher even in order to attempt not to limp slowly like the majority of my age cohorts and younger. My legs feel like steel rods.

Your garden is lovely. Our last iris here in the CA project just wilted, but our roses here are beautiful, and the roses in NV(our primary home) were spectacular when we left.
Here's some pix. The rose garden pictured is in our NV home.
Enjoy your retirement to the fullest!!!!!

Best, Phillipa

Read this book: Women Confronting Retirement: A Non-traditional Guide

I recently recently discovered Women Confronting Retirement: A Non-traditional Guide, a collection edited by Nan Bauer-Maglin and Alice Radosh. The book has helped me think through my approach to my retirement years.

The contributors are mostly white, middle class professional women. For the most part, these are women who can afford to finance (at the least) a modest retirement. They all write well and their stories are sometimes gripping.

No surprise, I was most interested in accounts of retired teachers. They confirmed my belief that teachers are especially well equipped to deal with the unstructured time of retirement. We have invested a lifetime in reading, writing, learning--self-directed pursuits which can be engaged in independent of institutional affiliation.

Also since we’ve had so much time off, we’ve had a lot of practice for retirement. One of my more cynical colleagues said to me: "Why are you retiring? You have a 3 day schedule for 28 weeks of the year. That leaves plenty of time for all the things you want to do. Why give up the paycheck?"

Well, my answer is similar to Phillipa Kafka's, in her essay, “Afterthoughts:”

Rather than subject my students to what I had observed some of my older colleagues doing after they had “lost it”—teaching only for their paycheck and to have some place to hang out every day, I determined to retire as soon as possible.(p.234)

It’s not so easy to stay engaged for decades and I was struck by how many of the former teachers felt the job had changed since the early days when they were in love with their work. Susan Radner focuses on changes in her relationship with her students:

As I entered my fifties and sixties, I had to change my approach in the classroom and make political connections for them. Although most students seemed eager to learn about the feminist literature I was teaching in all my classes, they were very passive, in glaring contrast to the activist students of previous generations. (p.222)

And it’s not just the students who have changed. Susan Radosh’s describes younger faculty as less politically engaged:

Individual career paths replaced concern for those without power—students, support staff, junior faculty. Feminism became an adornment rather than a life-motivating force. Smartly dressed young women fought for the goodies—courses, promotions—while at the same time mouthing feminist ideas by now cliché….In a sign that my life had come full circle, I again found myself isolated in committee meetings and group discussions. I just didn’t see things the way the others did. Thus in ways big and small, I came to feel that I had outlived my usefulness.(p.223)

Others, such as Lanie Melamed focus on the institutional changes which drove them to retire:

In the early nineties, class sizes escalated, faculty ranks and student-centered programs were downsized, and computers were marking student papers. Excellence in teaching became a fading objective as universities hungered for research monies to replenish disappearing funds. Soon after I retired, my colleagues were facing classes of 65 to 140 students. This was anathema to my views of effective teaching and learning, requiring performance-style lecturing with little opportunity for small group work and interactive class discussion. (p.297-8)

For those like me who have spent most of their teaching career in one institution, a powerful motivator was the desire to do something different in the time they have left. Diane Horwitz who spent 30 years as a community college sociology teacher writes:

I spent two hours of the work day driving, often through snowy Chicago winters. Five, sometimes six classes each semester produced hundreds of papers to grade; after the first ten, I would grow weary. The college offered just two or three different sociology courses, so I often repeated Introduction to Sociology four times a day. While each class presented new challenges, I ached for variety.(p. 166)

As I read these essays, I was struck by how temperament (more than anything else) seemed to color the writers’ feelings about retirement. Some clearly have those sunny, resilient temperaments I’ve always admired and envied. It’s what my husband refers to as the Aunt Sally temperament. We visited my husband’s Aunt Sally in her nursing home when she was in her mid-nineties. She greeted us as cheerfully as always and said, “Well, I don’t know who you are but I feel like I should know you. But that’s okay; I’m so happy you stopped by. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

Chances are if you were an Aunt Sally when you were young, you’ll be one when you’re old. Some of the writers, like Dorothy Kapstein Hammer have Aunt Sally’s upbeat disposition:

Any remorse? Yes, there are always some do-overs in our heads and hearts, but at this stage I try to replace them with what is doable and gives me pleasure. I celebrate what I have done and seen, what I can still do, and what I look forward to doing. So what is this thing called retirement”? It can be a joy or a bugaboo, depending on how you view it. I believe I’ve retired to more free time to do the things I love without stress and although I am clearly slowing down, I’ve tailored myself a work-and-play ethic that is rich and rewarding. It truly makes for retirement without regrets. (p.310)

Similarly, Ida Henderson writes:

To those already retired, I say, “It’s a big world, follow your passion and seize every moment. Come on in, the water’s fine. Can’t swim? Don’t worry; there’s always someone willing to coach you.” In conclusion, I have to say I have been truly blessed with good health, a loving family and an abundance of sincere and caring friends.
I am always ready to seize the day and follow my passion! (p.316)

Others have a melancholic streak which I suspect they’ve always had. Carol Gamin writes:

I know, upon reflection, that the imminence of death colors the choices and activities of later life, just as surely as does frailty or illness. What I want to do is not let it take over. I want to benefit from the shadows by appreciating light and color and beauty and sound and love more. I want my physical senses and my spiritual appetites to be whetted by the approach of death.(p.310)

I’ve had similar thoughts but never expressed them so well. For me, keeping the melancholic streak at bay is my major challenge in retirement. I do not fear unstructured time. I’ve always been the busy little beaver, developing new course, new projects, and building new organizations. There are more activist projects/writing projects than I’ll ever have time to complete. There are so many books to read, languages to learn, friends to re-connect with—-not to mention all my garden projects.

I am not worried about too much time on my hands. I am worried about thoughts of the future—aging, illness, loss, death-intruding on present happiness. Aunt Sally would never have let that happen. So I am trying to cultivate whatever inner Aunt Sally I might have.

My husband and I celebrated his 68th(!!!) birthday in NYC last week

My husband and I celebrated his 68th birthday in NYC last week and saw the magical new production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Luckily we got our tickets before the Obamas went and had great seats. My husband thought the first act was too diffuse and needed editing. Maybe so, but I loved every minute of it.

My husband and I are both kind of shell-shocked by these numbers: 68 for him and 65 for me in September.

This appears to be a common reaction. I have never heard anyone say: “Well, I’m 65 but I feel like 85; the time has passed so slowly.” It's much more likely to be: “Well, I’m 65 but I feel like 35; the time has passed so quickly.”

How to slow down the time? I’ve noticed when we have spent 3 weeks on a vacation to a foreign country it often seems like much more than 3 weeks. When I am at home during the summer, doing nothing in particular, 2 weeks can disappear in a flash. I think there’s a lesson here.

Of course we can’t afford to be traveling around the globe most of our time! But we are thinking of ways to stretch our resources to get to NYC more often.

My husband loves New York and if we could afford it, he would want to retire to the isle of Manhattan. I always feel more alive when I’m in NYC, but I wouldn't want to live there--too frenetic for me. My beloved Philly is just about my speed.

But good as Philly theater is, it’s not Broadway . We usually go to NYC about 4 times a year and need to figure out ways to do it more often (and thus more economically). Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

The Last Iris

Well I will have to wait another year to see my Iris and my peonies again. My irises were finished last week and my last peony bit the dust yesterday.

I am madly in love with bearded irises and always feel very sad when the last Bearded iris fades away (I usually have some Siberian iris for another week, but it’s not the same.)

Beard Iris have that indescribable fragrance that I cannot get enough of. True, there are re-bloomers that sometimes come back in the Fall but that’s not when I want that intoxicating Iris fragrance.

My first bearded iris appeared in the first week of May and the last one to bloom, Beverly Sills, departed my garden on June 3. This has got to be one if the most beautiful irises of all time-–a pale peach color with a fragrance to die for. I’ve often wondered if the real Beverly Sills appreciated the magnificent iris named for her.

How many more years will I see Beverly return? I try to banish those stupid, morbid thoughts. For me, one of the challenges of the retirement years is to stop thinking like this. Such thoughts sure don’t buy us any more time.

I finished cleaning out my office on Thursday. Now I can finally relax and smell the roses.

I handed in my keys and finished cleaning out my office on Thursday. Now I can finally relax and smell the roses.

I managed to reduce the contents of my office to 2 boxes and the last box was removed on Thursday. When I first began sorting and sifting, I thought a lot about what I would throw away. Yesterday I stopped agonizing and threw most of the stuff in the trash.

I finally finished all the retirement paperwork-—running around to various offices getting signatures attesting that I don’t have any college library books, audio-visual equipment, computers etc. in my possession. So it is finally all over.

I never expected the process of retiring to be so much work!

Next year I will have time to smell the lilacs

The busiest time of the year for gardeners is the busiest time for a teacher. My semester ends the beginning of May, so I have had little time for gardening in April.

Usually by the time I have gotten through final exams, collapsed from absolute and total exhaustion for a few days, it’s mid-May. The weeds are already out of control and it’s too late for all those hostas I wanted to divide, all those perennials I wanted to move around.

This happens again in the Fall as I desperately try to divide perennials, cruise the garden centers for fall planting bargains, plant bulbs, at the same time as I have all these classes to teach—-not to mention my volunteer projects.

It became clear that some thing had to go: my job, my garden, my volunteer work. Since I get most satisfaction from the garden and the volunteer projects (more about that later), it was clear that the job had to go. Too bad the pay check has to go as well, but at this stage in my life time is so much more valuable than money.

Well, back to weeding. It sure beats grading papers.

Cleaning out my office: who would have thought it would be so hard?

I have been cleaning out my office and, in the process, reliving my life at CCP. I decided I would reduce the contents of my office  to two boxes and I am almost there.

There’s a whole lot to throw out. I’ve accumulated 35 years of teaching materials, and for some inexplicable reason have saved all kinds of memos. I’ve unearthed various memos on issues I once cared about. I no longer have the same degree of passion or even interest and very few are worth recycling, but when I looked at the file labeled “Faculty Senate,” I hesitated before throwing it into the overflowing trash can. This is one issue I'd like to address one more time before I hand in my keys and walk out the door. Who would have thought that this issue would still matter to me when all those hard fought fights about curriculum are of so little interest?

At my college we do not have a faculty body independent of the union and I’ve always thought that my professional live was the poorer as a consequence. I’ve never bought the assumption that every educational issue is a union issue and believe there is a real tension between my identity as an educator and my identity as a union member.

So I sent my last memo, but somehow the College’s email program or the union’s listserv doesn’t want to receive it. Is this a sign, I should just give up on this??

Turning in my last set of grades

Last Tuesday, a few minutes before the midnight deadline, I turned in my last set of grades. Making all those judgment calls is the absolutely worst thing about teaching.

 I’ve often envied my husband who teaches math. I should say taught math—it’s past tense for both of us. His grading system is clear, objective, much more easily justified than mine. There’s a right answer and a wrong answer.

 Grading in Women’s Studies, Humanities, English is unavoidably subjective. I really try to be fair, but my biases inevitably creep in. How do I factor in class participation in a way that that’s fair, impartial?  How do I justify a C grade for student X and a B for student Y?  And then Student Z has been dealing with so many problems this semester; shouldn’t this be taken into account in some way???   I am so relieved that I never have to go through this again.

 I may have made a real contribution to grade inflation this time around, but since I’m retiring I don’t have to worry that I am sliding down the slippery slope in which A becomes the default grade.

 Teaching can be fun; evaluating students’ performance is always a headache. Ironically although I have spent decades evaluating students, I myself have never been evaluated. I have been teaching at the College since 1974 when I began as part-timer. I was hired full time in 1977, so have spent a total of 35 years teaching at the College and never has anyone entered my classroom to evaluate my teaching.  Never has anyone evaluated my syllabi, course outlines and made suggestions for improvement.

I must admit it was kind of nice to close my classroom door and do whatever I wanted. Would I have been a better teacher if someone had visited my classes and evaluated my teaching? Probably. Thanks to an uncompromising union  and an often cowardly management we have no meaningful evaluation system, and I have ended my teaching career without anyone EVER evaluating my classroom performance.

My last class

I had wondered if I would feel any sadness about teaching my last class, any tinge of regret.

Fortunately, my last class was my best one this semester, my Community Involvement class. I have some terrific students in that class and everything went well, but my feeling at the end of the day was pure relief. I’ve gotten through my last semester, did a decent (if sometimes uninspired) job and ended on a good note.

 If I had stayed on any longer, there’s a chance that my last class might not have gone so well. If I stayed a year or two, I might have started screaming uncontrollably when a student answered a cell phone in class.  There’s also a good chance that I would have cancelled quite a few classes out of sheer exhaustion.

 So no regrets about leaving teaching.  Just relief that I got through the semester.

 I still have mountains of papers to grade, but the performance part of the job is over.  Although I have lost interest in teaching the same courses I’ve taught for many decades, and have totally lost interest in the pedagogical issues that were once an all–consuming passion, when I’m in the classroom I usually enjoy the interaction.

As my husband put it, you’re like a professional actor in a long running play,  Women’s Studies 101. You’ve done it a million times, but like a good pro, when you walk into the classroom something clicks and you perform.

 It may be like this on other jobs as well. I was telling my dentist about this and he said, “It’s kind of like the practice of dentistry. I’m getting bored and sometimes don’t want to go to work, but when I get there and interact with the patients, it’s fine."

 The anticipation was always so much worse than the reality. The past few years I was beginning to dread going back go work when September rolled around. In August, I felt like a condemned prisoner counting down the last few precious days. But then I got back into the groove and  managed to get through.  My guess is if I had stayed, it would have been a whole lot harder to get back into the groove (harness?)

 So, bottom line, I got out at the right time, well before total burn-out.

The last few weeks are the hardest

The April 15^th retirement party and dinner was actually fun. The party was fairly small— not too many folks retiring in these hard times.

 

I skipped the English Department retirement party. How many retirement parties can one take? Also, some of the folks I never want to see again would probably have been there.

 

 The last few weeks really are the hardest. One of my colleagues who has seen many of his age cohort retire told me, “They all said when you make the final decision to retire all those dissatisfactions  you repressed-- so you could keep on going day after day—rise to the surface. When you’re no longer facing years on the same job, it’s safe to acknowledge that you’re burning out."

 

 I have some really good students this semester. I was afraid I would get the class from hell my last semester but fortunately that didn’t happen. So I have some good students who deserve good teaching and I am trying to hold up my end.  I want to end this thing honorably, but I am exhausted.

 

In teaching, no matter hard you work, it’s never  enough. There are always classes you could have prepared better, papers you could have graded more carefully, students you could have tried harder to reach etc etc.

 

I will soon be facing my last stack of papers to grade. It’s the paper grading that drives so many of us into early retirement. A friend (a retired Women’s Studies professor) told me she had a dinner for a group of retired academics and they all said that last set of papers is the hardest to get through.  In your mind, you’re already retired, but the papers are still there.

 

From the perspective of someone with a really hard job, I guess I sound like an impossible whiner. Okay, I’m not scrubbing floors, emptying bedpans or washing dishes for a living, but teaching really does take an emotional toll.

 

Well, time to stop whining and get back to grading those papers.

Retirement parties

I’ve never been much for special occasions and my husband is even worse. His aversion to celebrations has pushed me even further in that direction. We don’t even celebrate our wedding anniversary.

So now there is the retirement party conundrum. I’m uncomfortable with occasions like this. When the wonderful people I’ve worked with in the Women’s Studies program suggested a retirement party for me, I countered with "how about a passing the torch event?”

I was much more comfortable with this and thought it would be better for the program. The new Women’s Studies coordinator would have a chance to share her vision and hear colleagues' ideas for future program development.

So with this shift in focus, I started looking forward to the party and really enjoyed it. Many of the people I like best at the college were there and I am so happy there is a wonderful person to take over the program I built—-my little legacy. There’s nothing worse than putting your heart and soul into building something and then have it fall apart when you move on.

The College wide retirement party on April 15 won’t be so much fun. It won’t be a small group of people I really like and respect. One of the really good things about retirement is that there are some people I will never see again. (When you work in a place for a long time, you can develop deep friendships and deep animosities.)

My husband is retiring at the same time; we were an office romance 30 years ago. He is not the kind of person who holds grudges and doesn’t mind chit-chatting with old adversaries. I sometimes see him talking amiably with the worst person in the college, a person who once viciously attacked him.

I’ve often wanted to be as even tempered as he and once said to him, “I wish I could get over things as quickly, as easily as you do.” His reply: “I wish I could care about things the way you do.”

I have more intense friendships and more intense hatreds; this is playing it self out in saying good-bye (or good riddance) to my colleagues.

Of course, some are really good friends and my relationship with them will continue, but I will have to put some effort into maintaining the ties.

More on this after April 15 retirement party.